Transfers have made a difference for Purdue basketball

Carl Landry overcame an ACL injury to become one of the best players to wear a Purdue uniform.
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The epidemic that is college basketball transfers has reached 415 cases this spring, according to ESPN.com writer Jeff Goodman.

Symptoms include lack of love from their coach, playing time, homesickness or the opportunity to play a fifth season at a better program.

The fever has spread to central and southern Indiana. Butler has lost five transfers since the start of the 2013-14 season but has gained two, forward Austin Etherington from Indiana and guard Tyler Lewis from North Carolina State.

Former Purdue guard Ronnie Johnson is still searching for a home, while forward Donnie Hale moved closer to his New Albany roots by choosing Bellarmine. Former Indiana forward Jeremy Hollowell has migrated south to Georgia State and walkon guard Johnny Marlin is settled in at Indiana Wesleyan.

With 351 NCAA Division I basketball schools, odds are that any program that wants a transfer player will get one. With three open scholarships for next season, it would seem Purdue will have at least one transfer of either the fifth-year or the traditional, sit a year kind.

Including junior college transfers, the Boilermakers over the years have fared pretty well in getting an unexpected talent boost. Here are the top 10 impact transfers at Purdue:

• Carl Landry — The last great player recruited by Gene Keady to Purdue, Landry scored 1,175 points in just over two seasons after transferring from Vincennes University. His 18.4 points per game rank sixth all-time at Purdue.

• Brian and Steve Walker — The brothers transferred from North Carolina State to Purdue just in time to make new coach Lee Rose’s life a lot easier in 1979. Brian, the starting point guard on the 1980 Final Four team, still holds single-season steals record of 88 in 1979 and is third in career steals (259). He also ranks second on career (572) and season (205) assists list and has three of the top 10 assist seasons in Purdue history.

Steve, a 6-foot-5 forward, was the sixth man on the Final Four team and was a reliable defender.

• Steve Reid, Mark Atkinson and Curt Clawson were three good reasons why the 1984 Boilermakers exceeded their ninth-place forecast to win the Big Ten championship.

Reid, who came in from Kansas State, not only could shoot from outside but he also was a smart player who could pass the ball with equal skill. He scored 1,084 points in three seasons. He also is one of only six Boilermakers to average more than 10 points and five assists in a season and one of just seven with 1,000 points and 400 assists

Atkinson, a junior college transfer, supplanted Clawson in the starting lineup and averaged 8.1 points a game while also leading the Boilermakers in field goal percentage at 57.7 percent. More amazing, the 6-8 Atkinson led Purdue in blocked shots twice (24, 1984 and 22 in 1985).

Clawson, who came back to Indiana from Utah, led the 1984 Boilermakers in free throw percentage (85 percent). If you want to see more of his exploits, check out his Florida Congressional campaign website.

• Willie Deane left Boston College for what at first was a walkon opportunity at Purdue in order to be closer to his parents’ new home in Fort Wayne. With the exception of Jim Rowinski, no other walk-on had Deane’s impact.

The guard scored 16 points in Purdue’s upset of No. 1 Arizona at the 2000 John Wooden Tradition. Deane would go on to score 1,328 points in three seasons and earn first-team All-Big Ten honors in 2003.

• Arnette Hallman, too, was a major player in another Purdue upset of a top-ranked team. The forward from Joliet Junior College hit an unlikely jump shot from at least 20 feet away to beat eventual national champion Michigan State 52-50 in 1979.

Hallman was better known for his spectacular jumping ability and his rebounding. Even though he scored 563 points in two seasons, he and Joe Barry Carroll were a lethal rebounding and defensive presence inside for the 1980 Final Four squad.

• Doug Lee was the final piece of the puzzle for Gene Keady’s second Big Ten championship team in 1987. The 6-foot-5 forward who came from Texas A&M became one of six Boilermakers to average 10 points, four rebounds and three assists a game during that championship season.

• Finally, even though he only wore a Purdue uniform for two months, Lafayette Jeff graduate Ernie Hall was both the first African-American and and first junior college player to become a Boilermaker.

Had Hall not come to Purdue in 1952, the Boilermakers may well have missed out on players like Lamar Lundy, who arrived a year later from Richmond, and other African-American standouts of the 1950s such as Willie Merriweather and Wilson Eison.